Prime Minister

Appointment to the UK Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

Boris Johnson: The Hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) has been appointed as a substitute member of the United Kingdom Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) has been appointed as a full member in place of the Rt. Hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale). The Hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) has been appointed as Leader of the UK Delegation.

Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Contingencies Fund Advance

Paul Scully: I hereby give notice that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will draw an advance from the contingencies fund totalling £5,023,479,000 to enable expenditure on Covid-19 support packages for business to be spent ahead of the passage of the Supply and Appropriation Act in March 2021. The funding will go towards the following schemes:Local Restrictions Support Grant (LRSG) (closed) – grants of up to £3,000 per four weeks for closed businesses;The Closed Businesses Lockdown Payment - one-off grants worth up to £9,000 per business propertya £500m top up to the Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG) scheme in England.   Local Restrictions Support Grant (closed) schemeClosed Businesses Lockdown PaymentAdditional Restrictions Grant schemeTotal £mRDEL1,508.13,015.4500.05,023.5 Parliamentary approval for additional resources of £5,023,479,000 will be sought in a Supplementary Estimate for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at £5,023,479,000 will be met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund.The cash advance will be repaid upon receiving Royal Assent on the Supply and Appropriation Bill.

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Gibraltar

Dominic Raab: In the UK Approach to Negotiations on the Future Relationship with the EU as published in February 2020, the Government stated that it would act in these negotiations on behalf of all the territories for whose international relations the UK is responsible, which includes Gibraltar.We have worked side by side with the Government of Gibraltar to honour this commitment. As a consequence of the EU’s negotiating mandate which it adopted in February 2020, Gibraltar was not within scope of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). The Commission made a declaration alongside the TCA stating that this would ‘not preclude the possibility to have separate agreements between the Union and the United Kingdom in respect of Gibraltar’, and that it stood ready ‘to examine any request from Spain, in agreement with the United Kingdom, to initiate the procedure for the negotiation of such separate agreements should they be compatible with Union law and Union interests’.To that end, the UK, working side by side with the Governments of Gibraltar and Spain, reached agreement on 31 December over a political framework to form the basis of a separate treaty between the UK and the EU regarding Gibraltar. We have sent this framework to the European Commission in order to initiate negotiations on the treaty.The political framework covers issues of key importance to Gibraltar and the surrounding region, including on border fluidity. It creates the basis for a bespoke model for Gibraltar’s future relationship with the EU that will permit an absence of physical checks at the land border with Spain, and therefore ensure fluidity of movement of people and goods between Gibraltar and the EU. The Governments of both the UK and Gibraltar judge that this framework provides a firm basis to safeguard Gibraltar’s interests.The UK and Gibraltar are committed to ensuring that cross-border arrangements can continue in the interim, until a new treaty enters into force. Arrangements have been agreed with Spain that include provisions for the border (goods and people), road transport, healthcare, waste disposal, and data. In addition, the UK Government provided financial and other support to ensure that Gibraltar was fully prepared for the end of the Transition Period.We remain steadfast in our support for Gibraltar, and its sovereignty is safeguarded.